Gallup sounds an alarm, again, about our lack of confidence in ourselves

Summary: The sands on the hourglass slowly run out for America’s Second Republic. Anyone who cares to look can see this in a thousand ways, large and small. Today we review one especially obvious indicator: Gallup’s annual Confidence in Institutions Poll and the dark trends it records. It’s time to bring the Republic to DEFCON 2.

And therefore never ask for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee — and thy nation.
— from Meditation XVII of John Donne’s Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1624), slightly tweaked.

One constant during the ten years I’ve written is readers’ impatience with my warnings about the weakening of the Republic. Some say things get better then worse, a cyclical evolution as certain as the tides. Others say that things are always this bad, or this good — believing, like Zeno, that motion is impossible. Both are denials of history and display an unwillingness to listen to the winds howling around us.

Fortunately not all indicators of the Republic’s health are subjective. Gallup has run its Confidence in Institutions polls since 1973. They show two clear trends. First, our decreased confidence in the Republic’s democratic institutions and in the non-governmental institutions that are the ribs of the social fabric. Second, they show increased confidence in the authoritarian institutions of society. One need not be John Locke or Thomas Jefferson to see the likely consequences of this. Stand by for fascism or some other form by which the few use force and guile to rule the many who lack the confidence to stand together.

This one graph shows perhaps better than any the difference between the America-that-once-was and the New America. Confidence in churches down; confidence in the military up.

Jesus wept.
— John 11:35

Here’s the big picture

.

Note that “small business” and “big business” are not institutions or systems in the same sense as your church, or local school and criminal justice systems.

Please tell me how much confidence you, yourself, have in each institution.

Now for the bad news: look at the trends

These show a slow-motion collapse in our confidence in the institutions of the Republic.

Average percent of people saying they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in each institution:

Years

Military

Supreme Court

Congress

President

Police

Medical

Criminal Justice System

2013

76%

34%

10%

36%

57%

35%

28%

2000 – 2009

74%

43%

22%

43%

59%

39%

26%

1990 – 1999

68%

46%

23%

46%

57%

39%

20%

1980 – 1989

58%

50%

33%

1973 – 1979

56%

46%

39%

.

Nothing shows our fecklessness, our disinterest in the work of self-government, than graph of confidence in Congress.. Everybody knows the problem. Many laugh. Many bitch. Few work to fix this, although elections are held every two years. Nobody puts a gun to our heads in the polling booth. We are directly responsible for the people sitting in Congress. An inability to assume collective responsibility, to act together makes democratic government impossible.

Of course these trends did not fall like rain from Heaven. Many are the result of wealth applied intelligently over decades to the remold society. Or rather, erode of confidence in the Republic’s institutions, in ourselves, in order to break our society so that it can be remolded.

The long campaign against our schools shows the effectiveness of their work. It also shows that, despite conservative dogma, local control need not produce either accountability or efficiency.

A broken observation-orientation-decision-action loops is one one of our greatest ills, as it hampers our ability to see and understand — prerequisites for effective action. Here we see both a cause and effect of that broken OODA loop. The internet makes possible new and superior means of collection, analysis, and dissemination of information. Unfortunately the internet has developed in ways not necessarily to our advantage

There were those with great hopes for TV news. It seems to have provided employment for pretty guys and gals, but done little else for America.

14 thoughts on “Gallup sounds an alarm, again, about our lack of confidence in ourselves”

Not to point out the obvious, but some of us voted for “change you can believe in” and got the exact opposite, change in the wrong direction, so the bootstrapping problem remains: i.e., that we are not presented with real choices in the polling booth.

Presidents have a long long history of doing things very different than they promised. FDR and WW2 (I agree with his actions, but the point remains). Johnson ran against he war-monger Goldwater, while his people were planning Vietnam. Nixon I plying he had a plan to end Vietnam, while he in fact expanded it. Reagan and deficits. Bush Jr and deficits. Obama and so many things.

But, as I said in my last post, there is no cost to their lies. Apparently, to judge from our behavior, we enjoy big lies. Obama is wonderful as he sugar coats the harsh reality with pretty words.

If The economy was stronger, how much higher would Obama’s ratings be? Lots. Are there strong signs of dissatisfaction with his many lies! Not that I see.

So it comes back to us. We are comfortable with the current government, and the evolution of New America. Until that changes, nothing will change.

Hence my recommendations for change are based on recognition that we are in the very earliest stage of organization — recruiting people to work to build interest in change.

False. These high numbers include forms of harrassment that are not remotely rape. Also, preliminary analysis I have seen suggests that these rates in the military are roughly similarly to those of the civilian population (adjusted for their demographics).

“that can’t build weapons that work”

I think the ten of thousands of people killed by US weapons disagree. Yes, many do not initially work well, or up to spec. But they are usually improved over time to delivery impressive degrees of lethality.

We can only guess as to why. There were another round of sex abuse scandals in the US Catholic Church. And we began the War on {redacted by US Government}, involving invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan — and interventions in many others.

And no , they don’t suck because americans are too lazy to organize and fight via responsible citizenship and democratic methods for “real” education reforms. They suck because the corrupt mission of public schools is in harmony with the corrupt nature of corporate state-capitalist culture and the unholy alliance of modernism, conservatism and traditionalism that sustains its conventional values.